If I Remain Silent, You May Lodge Complaint In The Hereafter That I Have Not Briefed You The Truth. So, I Must write. I Must speak. Almighty Allah Commands : " And when you speak, Speak Just, Even Though It Be A Matter Of Your Relative, And Fulfill The Covenant Of Allah." [ Al Quran - Surah Al Anaam - Verse No 152 ] NB: To see the list of Aticles, please click on "বাংলা নিবন্ধ-সমুহের তালিকা" & "List Of English Articles" Pages.

List Of English Articles

Tuesday, 28 August 2012

Can a Muslim take Mahatma Gandhi As a Role-Model ?

By: Maulana Muhammad A. K. Azad [ Abu Arif Al Alawi ]

Mahatma Gandhi ( 1869-1948) is called Father of Nation. Rabindranath Tagore described him as "Mahatma in beggar's harb". Muslim youths too take him as role-model. He desrves respect for his virtues, obviously. But Muslims must remember that our Role-models should only be Allah's beloved servants. Only this can lead us to success. Allah's beloved servants did not lead life according to desire of nafs whereas Gandhi and like-minded big guns spent the life following the desire of nafs.

Bapuji is projected as a sublime Saintly figure. But History shows he was a sex-mad. This is not a hush-hush affair; but an open secret. In order to make the point clear, let us see what Historians and Autobiographers say.First, let us take Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.

Rajmohan Gandhi writes in his " Mohandas- A true Story About A Man , his people and An empire":

" The book will release Gandhi from his shroud and myth." He also said:

“I see my book as being more about the man and not the icon,” Rajmohan Gandhi told Reuters in an interview at the book launch, which occurred at the

same place Mahatma was assassinated in New Delhi almost 60 years ago. “This is different from other books because it is a complete and chronological

biography which is completely candid ... other biographies have focused on some aspects of his life, invariably eliminating other aspects."

"

In the book, there is a four-page account of how the married Gandhi – respected for his wisdom and simplicity – had a love affair with a talented

writer, Saraladevi, the niece of renowned poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. The book details how Gandhi “was dazzled by her personality

and seemed to fantasise that providence desired them together to shape India to a new design” and how he was forced to end the relationship for the

sake of his family.

The author said the affair was not a secret, knocking down a recent article in a local magazine which touted the relationship as clandestine. “It was

not a secret love affair. It was published in several books years ago,” said Gandhi. “There was no illicit relationship in the sense that there was

no sex in the relationship.”

He said writing about the affair would not hurt Gandhi’s almost saintly-image and that those closest to the Mahatma – his family and his followers –

had welcomed it. “I was writing the whole truth about Gandhi, so I had to write about that as well.” reuters

Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles

"Gandhi became a brahamachari (celibate) when he was thirty-six. As a brahamachari, he would normally have been expected to eschew all contact with

women, but instead he took naked women to bed with him. Amongst those who slept with him were Sushila Nayar, Sucheta Kriplani, Abha and Manu. Gandhi

viewed the practice as an experiment in brahamacharya. For him this was a sure way to test his mastery of celibacy. He believed that if he could

succeed in his brahamacharya experiment, he would be able to vanquish Muhammad Ali Jinnah with his spiritual power and foil his plan for India's

partition.

During his Noakhali tour of 1946, Gandhi used to sleep with the nineteen-year-old Manu. When Nirmal Bose, his Bengali interpreter, saw this he

protested, asserting that the experiments must be having bad psychological effects on the girl. In his Book My Days with Gandhi, published in 1953

with great difficulty and at his own expense, he offers a Freudian interpretation to Gandhi's experiments.

It is generally believed that Gandhi started sleeping with women toward the close of his life. According to Sushila Nayar, he started much earlier.

However, at the time he called it 'nature cure.' She told Mehta, 'long before Manu came into the picture I used to sleep with him just as I would

with my mother. He might say my back aches. Put some pressure on it. So I might put some pressure on it or lie down on his back and he might just go

to sleep. In the early days there was no question of calling this a brahamacharya experiment. It was just part of nature cure. Later on, when people

started asking questions about his physical contact with women, the idea of brahamacharya experiments was developed. Don't ask me any more questions

about brahamacharya experiments. There is nothing to say, unless you have a dirty mind like Bose.'

No doubt Gandhi's interest in women, whether he called it 'experiments in brahamacharya' or 'nature cure,' was directed at a conscious suppression of

his own sexual feelings. The same is confirmed by his close political associate C. Rajagopalachari who told Mehta, 'it is now said that he was born

so holy that he had a natural bent for brahamacharya, but actually he was highly sexed.'

Like many, Gandhi was convinced that sex diffuses human energy, which should be conserved and sublimated. He imposed celibacy on all those who lived

in his ashram (retreat). J.B. Kriplani and Sucheta Kriplani married against his wishes, but they remained brahamacharyas after their marriage. The

imposition of celibacy did not work in all cases. According to Raihana Tyabji, a devout disciple of Gandhi, 'the more they tried to restrain

themselves and repress their sexual impulses . . . the more oversexed and sex-conscious they became.'

Gandhi's ideas on sex are certainly outdated. He believed that a woman's interest in sex is submissive and self-sacrificing. He assumed that women

derived no pleasure from such activity. When his son failed to live what he considered a moral life, Gandhi felt guilty for what he viewed as the

sexual excesses of his married life. When his first child died soon after birth, he felt he was justly punished for his sexual sins. These sins were

twofold - he had intercourse with his pregnant wife and he had withdrawn from his ailing father's side to sleep with his wife (his father had died a

few minutes later). The guilt haunted Gandhi in his later years until he vowed to lead a brahamacharya life.

Though Gandhi did not lack moral education, he certainly lacked sex education."

Autobiographer Jad Adams writes ( The Independent 7 April, 2010):Thrill of the chaste: The truth about Gandhi's sex life

As he grew older (and following Kasturba's death) he was to have more women around him and would oblige women to sleep with him whom – according to his segregated ashram rules – were forbidden to sleep with their own husbands. Gandhi would have women in his bed, engaging in his "experiments" which seem to have been, from a reading of his letters, an exercise in strip-tease or other non-contact sexual activity. Much explicit material has been destroyed but tantalising remarks in Gandhi's letters remain such as: "Vina's sleeping with me might be called an accident. All that can be said is that she slept close to me." One might assume, then, that getting into the spirit of the Gandhian experiment meant something more than just sleeping close to him.

It can't, one imagines, can have helped with the "involuntary discharges" which Gandhi complained of experiencing more frequently since his return to India. He had an almost magical belief in the power of semen: "One who conserves his vital fluid acquires unfailing power," he said.

Meanwhile, it seemed that challenging times required greater efforts of spiritual fortitude, and for that, more attractive women were required: Sushila, who in 1947 was 33, was now due to be supplanted in the bed of the 77-year-old Gandhi by a woman almost half her age. While in Bengal to see what comfort he could offer in times of inter-communal violence in the run-up to independence, Gandhi called for his 18-year-old grandniece Manu to join him – and sleep with him. "We both may be killed by the Muslims," he told her, "and must put our purity to the ultimate test, so that we know that we are offering the purest of sacrifices, and we should now both start sleeping naked."

Such behaviour was no part of the accepted practice of bramacharya. He, by now, described his reinvented concept of a brahmachari as: "One who never has any lustful intention, who, by constant attendance upon God, has become proof against conscious or unconscious emissions, who is capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful, without being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited ... who is making daily and steady progress towards God and whose every act is done in pursuance of that end and no other." That is, he could do whatever he wished, so long as there was no apparent "lustful intention". He had effectively redefined the concept of chastity to fit his personal practices.

far, his reasoning was spiritual, but in the maelstrom that was India approaching independence he took it upon himself to see his sex experiments as having national importance: "I hold that true service of the country demands this observance," he stated.

But while he was becoming bolder in his self-righteousness, Gandhi's behaviour was widely discussed and criticised by family members and leading politicians. Some members of his staff resigned, including two editors of his newspaper who left after refusing to print parts of Gandhi's sermons dealing with his sleeping arrangements.

But Gandhi found a way of regarding the objections as a further reason tocontinue. "If I don't let Manu sleep with me, though I regard it as essential that she should," he announced, "wouldn't that be a sign of weakness in me?"

Eighteen-year-old Abha, the wife of Gandhi's grandnephew Kanu Gandhi, rejoined Gandhi's entourage in the run-up to independence in 1947 and by the end of August he was sleeping with both Manu and Abha at the same time.

When he was assassinated in January 1948, it was with Manu and Abha by his side. Despite her having been his constant companion in his last years, family members, tellingly, removed Manu from the scene. Gandhi had written to his son: "I have asked her to write about her sharing the bed with me," but the protectors of his image were eager to eliminate this element of the great leader's life. Devdas, Gandhi's son, accompanied Manu to Delhi station where he took the opportunity of instructing her to keep quiet.

Questioned in the 1970s, Sushila revealingly placed the elevation of this lifestyle to a brahmacharya experiment was a response to criticism of this behaviour. "Later on, when people started asking questions about his physical contact with women – with Manu, with Abha, with me – the idea of brahmacharya experiments was developed ... in the early days, there was no question of calling this a brahmacharya experiment." It seems that Gandhi lived as he wished, and only when challenged did he turn his own preferences into a cosmic system of rewards and benefits. Like many great men, Gandhi made up the rules as he went along.

While it was commonly discussed as damaging his reputation when he was alive, Gandhi's sexual behaviour was ignored for a long time after his death. It is only now that we can piece together information for a rounded picture of Gandhi's excessive self-belief in the power of his own sexuality. Tragically for him, he was already being sidelined by the politicians at the time of independence. The preservation of his vital fluid did not keep India intact, and it was the power-brokers of the Congress Party who negotiated the terms of India's freedom.

THE DAWN JULY 19 , 2009

The Dawn mentions:

1.Gandhi used to beat his wife up routinely.

2.Gandhi was having sex when his father lay breathing his last upstairs.

3.Gandhi denied sex to his wife for decades

4.Gandhi was an adulterer and had a spiritual marriage with two British women who were in the Ashram

5.Gandhi slept naked with his niece (and 12 year old girls) and other women to prove that he could control his manliness.

6.Gandhi would do enemas twice a day and if he liked you allowed you to enter the piece up his rectum

7.Gandhi used to drink his own urine and also the urine of cows

8.Gandhi son left him and converted to Islam

9.The racist Gandhi was a total failure in South Africa where he tried to stratify the society, Whites, Indians and Africans. His racism towards the

Africans was horrendous. His horrific advice to all Jews to commit suicide was abomible. His atrocious letters to his friend Hitler were the height

of stupidiy.

He was determined to live his life as an ascetic, a symbol of a religious man. As the poet Sarojini Naidu, who was known as the “Nightingale of

India” joked, “it costs the nation a fortune(millions) to keep Gandhi living in poverty.

This is what Time Magazine says:

“Exceptions to the author’s reserve mostly center on Gandhi’s limitations as a family man. Where the world sees a saint, Rajmohan Gandhi sees a cruel

husband and a mostly absent father, paying scant attention to his children’s schooling and dragging wife Kasturba across continents at will,

belittling her desire for the simplest of material possessions, then expecting her to comply when he turns from amorous husband to platonic companion

to apparent adulterer.”

Gandhi took on a magnetic personality in the presence of young women, and was able to persuade them to join him in peculiar experiments of sleeping

and bathing naked together, without touching, all apparently to strengthen his chastity. (Whether these experiments were always successful is

anyone’s guess.) It is also revealed that Gandhi began a romantic liaison with Saraladevi Chaudhurani, niece of the great poet Rabindranath Tagore—a

disclosure that has created a buzz in the Indian press. The author tells us that Gandhi, perhaps disingenuously, called it a “spiritual marriage,” a

“partnership between two persons of the opposite sex where the physical is wholly absent.

Rajmohan gandhi writes:Mahatma Gandhi was not shy of speaking about his relationship with his women associates, except in a few cases. He wanted the

world to know of his tryst with Brahmacharya in which women constituted an integral part. He kept a meticulous record and tried to make the players

keep the records too. Alas! Most of them seem to have either destroyed the records or refused to disclose the intensity of their feelings. A

construct, however, is still possible based on Gandhiji’s writings and on basis of writings of some of them, who were involved. Gandhiji persuaded

Kanchan Shah, his role model for Married Brahmacharya, and Prabhavati, wife of Jaiprakash Narayan, to practice married Brahmacharya. It was a

difficult odyssey and the book tries to analyse why it was difficult.”

“It was the revulsion from sex that forced Gandhiji to take the vow of Brahamacharya in 1906. Then onwards, till the laboratory experiment in

Noakhali, Gandhiji kept trying to find out if it was possible to overcome desire and remain a brahmachari. There were more than a dozen women who

came to closely associated with him at one time or the other. Some of them were foreigners – Millie Graham Polak, Sonja Schlesin, Esther Faering,

Nilla Cram Cook, Margarete Spiegel and Mirabehn. Prabhavati, Kanchan Shah, Shushila Nayyar and Manu Gandhi formed a part of his entourage at various

points in time. He called JEKI “the Only Adopted Daughter”. Gandhiji was too found of Saraldevi Chowdharani, Rabindranath Tagore’s niece, and often

displayed her as his mannequin for popularizing Khadi. He called her his “spiritual wife”.

His closeness to Saraladevi or arguments on Brahmacharya with Premabehn Kantak created a storm in the ashram and exposed him to public glare. He was

undaunted and made a tactical retreat to allow the storm to subside. Soon things were back to normal. While the world was unsure, the Mahatma was

sure of his actions.

There was a definite attraction in Gandhiji that brought womenfolk to him. It is quite possible that they were looking for glory and he provided the

opportunity. Some like Mirabehn were inspired by his ideals and wanted to devote their entire life to his cause. But once they came close, Gandhiji

and not his cause became their obsession. They hardly knew this was the next step to losing him, as the Mahatma could not be chained. He had higher

goals. The book is a psycho-biography and a study of man-woman relationship involving one of the greatest men in living memory.”

EXCERPTS FROM RAZMOHAN'S BOOK

from Gandhi’ grandson’s Book “Mohandas”:

“Saraladevi was the topic of discussion in undertones and overtones among his friends, associated and family members. How could Ba not be affected?

The years 1919 and 1920 were years of mental torture and agony for her”. (page 220)

Gandhiji referred to “small-talks, whispers and innuendos” going around of which he was well aware: “He was already in the midst of so much suspicion

and distrust, he told the gathering, that he did not want his most innocent acts to be misunderstood and misrepresented”. (page 339)

“The Sarla Devi episode in his life establishes his humanity. To suppress any information on Gandhi would have meant doing injustice to what he stood

for all his life – truth. I have only presented the facts as a scholar not a sensationalist journalist” (Mr Gandhi the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi

The book “Mohandas” also describes Gandhi’s practice of brahmacharya in his life. He would sleep nude with his niece Manu. “It’s a matter of

historical record. This has been written about many times. Even Gandhi wrote about it. In doing so, he was surrendering his sexuality and that of his

partner’s, after passing a huge test,“

Dr. Sushila Nayar told Ved Mehta that she used to sleep with Gandhi as she regarded him as a Hindu god.

Bhattacharjee on Friday said as a man of great aesthetic sensibility, if Gandhi felt attracted to a “woman of intellect”it could be natural.

Elaborating her point, Bhattacharjee said Mahatma Gandhi also admired the way Rajkumari Amrit Kaur held her pen.

In another book “Mira and the Mahatma”, psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakkar delves deep into the desires that lay buried in the “Mahatma’s” heart. The hero

pines for the company of his Mira who is away from him. “You are on the brain. I look about me, and I miss you. I open the charkha and miss you,”

(Excerpt from Sudhir Kakkar’s book).

FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT BY SIMON & SCHUSTER

“…at the age of sixty-seven, thirty years after he had sworn his vow of brahmacharya, Gandhi awoke after an arousing dream with what would have been

to most men of that age a source of some satisfaction, but was to Gandhi a calamity, an erection.” [Page 81, Freedom at Midnight, Simon& Schuster

Edition,1975

The following is a quote from Collins and La Pierre in Freedom at Midnight.Chapter 4 (A Last Tattoo For A Dieing Raj)

“Gandhi saw in Manu’s words the chance to make her the perfect female votary. “If out of India’s millions of daughters, I can train even one into an

ideal woman by becoming an ideal mother to you” he told he “I shall have remembered a unique service to womankind”. But first he felt he had to be

sure she was telling the truth. Only his closest collaborators were accompanying him to Noakhali, he informed her, but she would be welcome, provided

she submitted to his discipline and went through the test which he meant to subject her.

They would, he decreed, share each night the crude straw pallet which passed for his bed. He regarded himself her mother; she had said that she found

nothing but a mothers love for him. If they were both truthful, if he remained firm in his ancient vow of chastity and she had never know sexual

arousal, then they would be able to lie together in the innocence of a mother daughter. If one of them was not being truthful, they would soon

discover.

“…at the age of sixty-seven, thirty years after he had sworn his vow of Brahmacharya, Gandhi awoke after an arousing dream with what would have been

to most men of that age a source of some satisfaction, but was to Gandhi a calamity, an erection.”[Page 81, Freedom at Midnight , Simon & Schuster

Edition,1975

GANDHI GETS CAUGHT WITH HIS PANTS DOWN:-LITERALLY

“During his Noakhali tour of 1946, Gandhi used to sleep with the nineteen-year-old Manu. When Nirmal Bose, his Bengali interpreter, saw this he

protested, asserting that the experiments must be having bad psychological effects on the girl.

In his book “My Days with Gandhi”, published in 1953 with great difficulty and at his own expense, he offers a Freudian interpretation to Gandhi’s

experiments. It is generally believed that Gandhi started sleeping with women toward the close of his life. According to Sushila Nayar, he started

much earlier. However, at the time he called it ‘nature cure.’ She told Mehta, ‘long before Manu came into the picture I used to sleep with him just

as I would with my mother. He might say my back aches. Put some pressure on it. So I might put some pressure on it or lie down on his back and he

might just go to sleep. In the early days there was no question of calling this a brahamacharya experiment. It was just part of nature cure. Later

on, when people started asking questions about his physical contact with women, the idea of brahamacharya experiments was developed. Don’t ask me any

more questions about brahamacharya experiments. There is nothing to say, unless you have a dirty mind like Bose.’ Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles is

an extremely well-written book. Mehta has made it highly readable with his subtle expression and suave sarcasm, particularly when he reproduces his

conversations with Gandhians. He has shown courage in unraveling some of the myths woven around Gandhi by his blind followers. The latter will

certainly be dismayed by Mehta’s forthrightness. The book has created a tumult in the Indian Parliament. It will be a great pity if it is banned”.

"We know from his autobiography how shamefully he treated his wife. He was transparently honest and he had much less to hide from anyone else.

Nothing can be found if other public figures are to be scrutinized because things have been carefully hidden and suppressed.” Gandhi, the family man

"Mohandas - A true story about a Man, his People and an Empire" .

Bibudharanjan, the author of `Michcha Mahatma' writes:

"People like Ambedkar, Rajgopalchari, Nirad Choudhury, Rammonahar Lohia and even Sarojini Naidu have talked about this dark side in Gandhiji. It was

difficult to accept a man full of frailties as the Mahatma. I love Gandhi but as a human being not as a saint, and I wanted history to be corrected.

But the way his so-called followers are reacting with angry outbursts, it seems they themselves have not understood Gandhiji who always advocated

respect for the `other opinion."

Mira and the Mahatma, by Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar

Mira and the Mahatma, by Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar, explores what appears to have been a close but platonic relationship between Gandhi and

Madeline Slate, daughter of a British admiral, who left Britain in 1925 at the age of 33 and travelled to India to be with Gandhi, then 56.

Autobiographer Jad adams wrtes further:

"It was no secret that Mohandas Gandhi had an unusual sex life. He spoke constantly of sex and gave detailed, often provocative, instructions to his followers as to how to they might best observe chastity. And his views were not always popular; "abnormal and unnatural" was how the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, described Gandhi's advice to newlyweds to stay celibate for the sake of their souls.

But was there something more complex than a pious plea for chastity at play in Gandhi's beliefs, preachings and even his unusual personal practices (which included, alongside his famed chastity, sleeping naked next to nubile, naked women to test his restraint)? In the course of researching my new book on Gandhi, going through a hundred volumes of his complete works and many tomes of eye-witness material, details became apparent which add up to a more bizarre sexual history.

Much of this material was known during his lifetime, but was distorted or suppressed after his death during the process of elevating Gandhi into the "Father of the Nation" Was the Mahatma, in fact, as the pre-independence prime minister of the Indian state of Travancore called him, "a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac.

Gandhi was born in the Indian state of Gujarat and married at 13 in 1883; his wife Kasturba was 14, not early by the standards of Gujarat at that time. The young couple had a normal sex life, sharing a bed in a separate room in his family home, and Kasturba was soon pregnant.

Two years later, as his father lay dying, Gandhi left his bedside to have sex with Kasturba. Meanwhile, his father drew his last breath. The young man compounded his grief with guilt that he had not been present, and represented his subsequent revulsion towards "lustful love" as being related to his father's death.

However, Gandhi and Kasturba's last child wasn't born until fifteen years later, in 1900.

In fact, Gandhi did not develop his censorious attitude to sex (and certainly not to marital sex) until he was in his 30s, while a volunteer in the ambulance corps, assisting the British Empire in its wars in Southern Africa. On long marches in sparsely populated land in the Boer War and the Zulu uprisings, Gandhi considered how he could best "give service" to humanity and decided it must be by embracing poverty and chastity.

At the age of 38, in 1906, he took a vow of brahmacharya, which meant living a spiritual life but is normally referred to as chastity, without which such a life is deemed impossible by Hindus.

Gandhi found it easy to embrace poverty. It was chastity that eluded him. So he worked out a series of complex rules which meant he could say he was chaste while still engaging in the most explicit sexual conversation, letters and behaviour.

With the zeal of the convert, within a year of his vow, he told readers of his newspaper Indian Opinion: "It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife."

Meanwhile, Gandhi was challenging that abstinence in his own way. He set up ashrams in which he began his first "experiments" with sex; boys and girls were to bathe and sleep together, chastely, but were punished for any sexual talk. Men and women were segregated, and Gandhi's advice was that husbands should not be alone with their wives, and, when they felt passion, should take a cold bath.

The rules did not, however, apply to him. Sushila Nayar, the attractive sister of Gandhi's secretary, also his personal physician, attended Gandhi from girlhood. She used to sleep and bathe with Gandhi. When challenged, he explained how he ensured decency was not offended. "While she is bathing I keep my eyes tightly shut," he said, "I do not know ... whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on. I can tell from the sound that she uses soap." The provision of such personal services to Gandhi was a much sought-after sign of his favour and aroused jealousy among the ashram inmates.

So, let us follow Allah's pious servants and not those who remained away from Islam and whom Allah did not favour..